I don't have any evidence that this works, but I think you might be able to get your phone number removed from spam bots by answering and immediately muting yourself. The bots are programmed to start their routine when they hear a "hello" or any significant sound on the receiving end. If you make no noise to initiate the conversation, they almost always hang up in about 6 to 8 seconds. I imagine that this sort of failure is logged on their end as a phone number to not call again, because what kind of human would answer the phone and not make a sound? Well, me 😂

Think of the alternative signals you can send:

- don't answer and they will just try again later
- send them to voicemail while ringing will indicate you are a human but you don't want to talk right now, so they will try again later
- answer and say hello - now they know for sure you're a human and they will keep bothering you

But answer and make no noise and they system will probably think you're a bot or some unreachable line. I feel like I've gotten less spam calls since I started doing this. Like I said, this is just my personal theory, but it's crazy enough to work 😁